Oh I don’t think that’s true. It does work that way. The law is applied the same way to everyone, but everyone’s circumstances are different. The law definitely takes that into account. You can look at the way the law considers indigenous custom and law or sharia law. Our legal system is a pretty sophisticated thing.
Also if I follow your argument to its logical conclusion, we’re prosecuting people that shouldn’t be, based on the idea it’s too hard to work out if they’re criminals or not.
Was the cop Irish or Scottish or Welsh? Could he be a victim of Racism then as the English have systematically persecuted the Celts for centuries and Kerr has English blood on her fathers side?
That’s been legislated and enshrined (in parts) in law hasn’t it? The fact the Aboriginals are allowed to hunt on their land etc is part of the law. They still need to follow all parts of Common Law though. They don’t just get to run their own legal system as they see fit.
But your idea is to let certain portions of the population get away with doing things that other portions of the population aren’t able to do.
I just really don’t understand your argument that, just because someone is part of a nationality group that has been oppressed in the past, it gives them full rights to vilify the entire race because technically they can’t be racist. I mean we talk about the slave trade or the British occupation of India, but there was plenty of natives that made huge amounts of money out of those two situations themselves. What does that mean for them? I remember reading a few days ago about an African King that complained to the Belgians as they were taking too many slaves and it was eating into his own profits.
And yeah, if the odd person gets away with doing a racism that’s better than people being prosecuted when they shouldn’t be. I don’t have a problem with that.
I’d encourage you to read on the history of “whiteness” and modern racism, as it largely started in the Spanish colonies in the Americas, where the laws literally wrote these degrees of distinction into it - although there is now scholarly debate over these terms constituting a rigid system of racial hierarchy like that in apartheid South Africa, we nonetheless know for sure things like this:
" For example, both mestizos and Spaniards were exempt from tribute obligations, but were both equally subject to the Inquisition. Indios, on the other hand, paid tribute yet were exempt from the Inquisition. In certain cases, a mestizo might try to “pass” as an indio to escape the Inquisition. An indio might try to pass as a Mestizo to escape tribute obligations."
Any system of racial prejudice depends, ultimately, on the eyes of the observer - to the point that cops in Apartheid SA would continually refer people to the racial board to reclassify their ID category and people would equally appeal to have their status “upgraded”.
Much like the argument over what constitutes a red card, the answer to your question is - that’s up to the judge(/ref) to sort out based on their interpretation of the law.
ThenI should give up now because i don’t know how to break through that level of misinterpretation, I’m saying laws have to be unambiguous to work properly, I said nothing about not prosecuting because it’s hard to work out who’s a a criminal, I’m actually pointing out that you must solve exactly that problem.
You’re kind of proving my point here, the red card rules are ill-defined and result in what appears to be highly arbitrary decision-making, demonstrating the need for clearly defined criteria that ensure that refs do less stupid shit.
Exactly the same. Regardless of the hilariously feeble attempts to alleviate it or play it down with 2+2=5 mental gymnastics no-one should be insulted due to the colour of their skin or race. Ever. It’s quite simple.
Just another entitled diva-esque professional sports person whose true nature comes out after a few drinks.
Fuck her & her conga line of golden goose loving suckholes who think this acceptable.
You totally could have an unambiguous law that protects marginalised people from racism, but also protects them from wrongly being prosecuted for racism.
We could expect courts to administer that law on a case by case basis.
It’s not impossible. This stuff isn’t unknowable. I’m surprised that this in question.
It sounds as though a marginalised person is anyone who doesn’t have white skin, excluding anyone who identifies as Polish, with a victim complex, because of 18th Century slave trade. Also women.
But at the end of the day there’s still a review process for a person(s) to make an arbitration, based on the evidence at hand, whether or not the criteria have been met in the first instance (of calling a foul/issuing a card or of making an arrest/issuing a charge). Regardless of how “vague” or not the legislation is. The context of prior interpretations or precedent is also taken into account. This is the case with the current legislation and would be the case under Shabby’s suggestion.
I do respect a point you’ve made, that if she gets off on this some lawyers are going to try and use that as precedent in cases where the power balance is the other way round. But that’s not a reason to judge a case.
This isn’t really necessarily the case. It’s not as simple as, Kerr gets off, so now white people can never have any protection under that law.
There are a lot of possibilities:
Her defence is asking for the case to be tossed out. If this is the case there’ll be no decision made and therefore no legal precedent to draw on.
Or the judge could hear it and decide that their interpretation of whatever relevant law is, is that she’s not guilty of whatever the offence is, based on the fact that, for example, whatever act she committed was not aggrevated by racism because there’s no case that a person in the position of the police officer could reasonably experience racism, etc etc.
And that decision becomes good law, and future people in similar positions will have the benefit of that. But the point is that the reasons matter when applying precedent.
